Forewarning
by Lynse
Summary: All Dipper knew was that there was something buried in some special thermos behind the shack; all Danny knew was that he had no idea how he'd gotten here.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This fic was inspired by a lovely piece of fanart by hashtag-art on tumblr, which you can find a link to through my tumblr (ladylynse) via the 'my tumblr fics' link in my profile description or by searching the tag 'christmas truce 14' on hashtag-art's tumblr. The story is set before the mystery of the author is uncovered and is a birthday present for Bibliophilea. Happy birthday! Standard disclaimers apply.

* * *

"The book mentioned there might be something stuck in some special thermos that's buried just behind the shack," Dipper explained as he sunk the spade into the ground again.

Mabel eyed him, unimpressed, and made no move to pick up the trowel that rested a few feet from where Dipper stood. "What else did the book say?" It lay open at his feet, but she couldn't make out anything from where she sat.

Dipper tossed the dirt aside and looked guilty. "I'm not sure."

"You didn't read it?"

"No, I read it. I just couldn't make it out."

"So the page had water damage or something?"

Dipper shook his head. "It wasn't in English."

"So—?"

"It's in some kind of code or made up language." Dipper stepped on the spade, widening his hole. "I can't crack it. Or translate it. And I don't exactly want to ask for help."

He didn't know who they could trust. He'd always been more suspicious than her, but their adventures this summer just seemed to cement his conviction that his suspicions were valid. Personally, she still thought he was a bit crazy, but he was her brother; that was expected.

"Not a cipher you know, huh?" mused Mabel as Dipper continued his work. "Even after you went through that code book two years ago? Impressive, bro-bro. This author of the journals must be good."

"It's the only page coded this way, though. That's what I don't get. There's text hidden on other pages, but nothing else is the same as this."

"Then maybe—" Mabel broke off as she heard Dipper's spade hit something. He dropped to his knees to paw at the loosened dirt, and she crawled forward to see what he'd found. Buried treasure, maybe?

Except it wasn't treasure; she could see that now. It _was_ metal, dulled from its time in the earth, but it didn't look like anything valuable. Even as Dipper worked to scrape the dirt away, it…. It really did look like an old thermos someone had forgotten about.

"What's supposed to be inside again?" Mabel asked slowly.

"That's the part I can't translate."

Bright, lurid green peeked out from beneath the dirt now, along with…buttons? Not just any old thermos, then, though she had no idea how it was supposed to be special. Mabel met Dipper's eyes, and he bit his lip as he reached for the lid.

He couldn't get it loose until she held the thermos in place while he turned with both hands, and then it came off with a _pop_. They both pulled back as smoke—vapour—_something_—began to swirl out of the thermos.

_Genie?_ Mabel mouthed, hoping to catch Dipper's eye, but he was too focused on the churning mist. It was beginning to form a humanoid shape now. She watched in silence, wondering if they were about to get three wishes—or some less pleasant surprise.

The vapour thickened, darkening in some places and lightening in others until the figure—the boy? Genie? Ghost?—almost looked solid.

And then he fell to his hands and knees with a _very _solid thud and let out a groan. Mabel would have shrieked if Dipper's hand wasn't suddenly covering her mouth; she hadn't even realized he'd moved beside her, though she wasn't surprised to see he'd grabbed the journal, too. She nodded slightly, and his hand dropped.

The boy had his back to them; he might not even have seen them. All she could see now was a shock of white hair and his weird black and white suit—not entirely unlike what Blendin had worn, though it looked to be made out of a different material.

"Aw, crud, how long was I in there this time?" The boy—whatever else he was, he was definitely a boy—climbed unsteadily to his feet. And then he stopped, looked around, and turned.

Saw the Mystery Shack.

Saw them gawking at him.

"Uh…." Bright green eyes blinked. "You're, um, not who I thought you'd be." He looked down and saw the empty thermos that had been his prison. He bent to scoop up the lid Dipper had dropped, and even though the thermos itself was still partially buried in the ground, he had no trouble pulling it out. He had barely touched it before it was free and clean of dirt to boot.

He must have noticed that they hadn't moved, because he shot them a smile as he screwed the lid back onto the thermos. "You've, ah, probably guessed this, but I'm Phantom."

"Ghost," Dipper muttered.

Phantom frowned. "It's Danny Phantom, actually," he said slowly, "which is clearly not ringing bells with either of you. Um, where exactly am I? I don't remember any Mystery Shack thing around Amity Park."

Mabel glanced at Dipper, but he didn't seem to know the name, either. He also wasn't making any weird facial expressions to convey that she shouldn't answer, so she said, "We're in Gravity Falls."

He scratched his head. "Is that in Wisconsin?"

"Oregon," Dipper answered, narrowing his eyes.

"How did I wind up in _Oregon_?" Phantom—Danny?—asked, though he didn't seem to expect an answer out of them. "Does Vlad have another cabin out here or something? Do you guys know Vlad Masters? Or have you heard of him?"

They shook their heads.

"But…." He looked at the thermos again. At the hole in the ground. The shovel, the trowel, even the journal under Dipper's arm. "If you guys don't know about Vlad, why…? How did I get there? How did you find me? Were you even _looking_ for me?" He took a step back, then another, and then he just…vanished.

"Maybe he's a friendly ghost?" Mabel offered when he didn't reappear.

"He's in the journal. In code. He can't be that friendly."

* * *

Danny couldn't remember what had happened, and that's what scared him the most. He'd been caught in a Fenton Thermos before, loads of times, but he usually remembered it happen. Plenty of those times he'd been caught by Jazz, accidentally or on purpose, or by one of his friends, or he'd been caught unawares in a fight, and then he at least remembered there being a fight, but this time….

This time, everything was muddled.

Nothing about this place seemed familiar from the air. He wasn't far from a town (not Amity Park, not Elmerton, not anywhere he remembered travelling to with his parents), so he checked it out in case the kids had been lying to him. They didn't trust him, maybe because they weren't used to ghosts or maybe because they'd only heard horror stories. He couldn't really blame them for that. Most people didn't grow up with ghost-obsessed parents.

Unfortunately, the girl had been telling the truth. This place was Gravity Falls, which no doubt meant it _was_ in Oregon, which meant he had absolutely no idea how he'd gotten here.

Danny settled on a large bough of a maple tree just outside of town and pulled the Fenton Thermos from his pocket. It was in good condition—better condition than the one he usually carried, assuming he remembered to bring it with him. But this thermos was also almost dead, the display barely visible in the daylight, and his presence inside of it was probably the only reason it had lasted this long. If he didn't recharge it, it wouldn't be good for anything but soup.

"Why am I here?" Danny whispered. The thermos had been buried. Vlad had no reason to do that to him. If he'd just wanted him out of the way, sure, but not when he still wanted Danny as a son—or, at the absolute very least, a mentee.

He had to be missing something. There must be some clue, somewhere, and if he could just find it—

But there was no way those kids were going to trust him, even if he went back to them for help. He'd seen how they'd looked at him. It wasn't just them being scared; they'd been wary, too. Maybe they'd run into ghosts before after all. He knew as well as anyone how many unsavoury ghosts were out there. Not everyone was nice once you got to know them.

He might get further with them if he pretended to be normal. He could tell the truth once he knew they wouldn't try to exorcise him or something. But in case they _had_ run into other ghosts….

Danny concentrated, letting some of his power seep into the thermos to recharge it. He'd rather risk ending up inside the thing again than not having it when he needed it. If he kept it with his suit, he could get it when he needed it and wouldn't arouse suspicion by carrying it around as Fenton.

Light flared around the thermos and died away, and he flew back down to the ground. The Mystery Shack wasn't far from town, and given the number of signs nailed to trees around here, it wouldn't be hard to find on foot. And if it took a bit of time for him to get there, well, that was probably a good thing. Showing up immediately after Phantom had wasn't going to win him any favours.

Too bad he'd already told them his name was Danny.

* * *

Dipper tapped the page of the journal. "He said he was a phantom."

Springs creaked as Mabel crawled onto his bed behind him to read the description over his shoulder. "He was in black _and_ white," she pointed out, "and seemed more preoccupied with this Vlad Masters guy than causing pain."

"That's because we didn't summon him. We just released him. Which means we need to catch him again before he tricks anyone into actually summoning him."

It would take more than a mirror to stop him; Dipper was certain of that much. Of course, the journal was a little vague when it came to the best way to stopping phantoms, but if that thermos thing had contained it for this long, it would work again. Of course, that required him to get the thermos back, and the phantom had taken it. And he wouldn't have the opportunity to get it back until he found the phantom again.

The easiest way to do that would be to summon it, but Dipper wasn't going to play into Phantom's hands. He knew how dangerous ghosts could be, and he wasn't going to underestimate this one. _Especially_ when it had gotten its own page in the journal.

Well.

_Page_ was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a small section of a page, mixed in with a collection of other eclectic notes, which was why he'd gone digging in the first place. The author of the journal hadn't steered him wrong before, and he was surprised the 'special thermos' had contained something so dangerous. And why would there be words of code on the page that didn't match the code used in the rest of the journal? It didn't make sense.

He'd been hoping for something helpful, some clue about the author, not…this.

"How are we supposed to catch him without summoning him ourselves?"

"He might come back since he knows we're here. He might think we're easy prey, being kids."

Mabel hummed in consideration. "Well, if he doesn't, I guess it's not the first time we've had to summon a ghost."

"I'm not summoning him. That's the one thing the book says not to do, Mabel. I'll just figure out how to exorcise him without summoning him."

Mabel huffed. "Why did you let him out again?"

Dipper knew better than to answer that, so he ignored her, and she eventually got bored and headed downstairs to visit with Soos and Wendy in the shop.

He went back to searching the journal for answers it didn't want to give, trying more variations of common and not-so-common ciphers on the coded message that must relate to the phantom. He didn't think it would be a way to defeat Phantom—the author of the journals would have had no reason to put that in code—but it had to be important. It _had_ to be. If he could just—

"Dipper! Get your butt down here!"

Dipper groaned as Mabel's yell interrupted his train of thought and he lost track of it completely. Worse still, a glance at the clock confirmed that she hadn't been gone that long. He closed the book and shoved it into his backpack to hide it; he planned on stuffing more ghost-hunting provisions into the bag anyway.

He slung the backpack over one shoulder and headed down the stairs. Mabel was waiting for him by the door between the shop and the private quarters of the house. Soos was out of the room, maybe showing someone around, maybe helping Grunkle Stan with something, and Wendy was talking to some kid at the counter.

Mabel jerked her head towards the boy and raised her eyebrows.

He gave her an appropriately confused look in return.

She stuck out her tongue in annoyance—real or mock, Dipper wasn't even sure—and turned around. "Hey, Danny, this is my brother, Dipper."

The boy turned, and Dipper blinked.

The resemblance between the boy and Phantom was uncanny.

And considering they both went by Danny….

"Hey," Danny said, smiling and raising one hand in an acknowledging wave. "I ditched my parents in town. Wanted to get away from them before they did something embarrassing, which usually happens within five minutes of arriving anywhere." He glanced around. "Does this place live up to its name?"

"Pay up and judge for yourself." Wendy popped her gum and leaned forward. "Assuming you make it out alive. Some pretty creepy things have happened here, you know."

Dipper knew exactly how much truth there was in Wendy's words, but he hadn't expected this Danny guy to look so thoughtful.

Danny pulled some change out of his pocket and frowned at it. "Not sure I brought enough with me," he said. Dipper squinted, but the money looked real enough from where he stood, and it—and Danny's speech patterns—weren't super old or anything like that.

He wasn't about to write off Danny's similarity to Phantom as a coincidence, though.

Not after everything else he'd learned was true this summer.

Especially when it felt like he'd just barely scratched the surface.

Besides, if Phantom could impersonate a human, maybe _that's_ what the coded message said. And maybe he wasn't really a phantom after all if he could do that; he might just be pretending to be a phantom. Maybe he wasn't even really a ghost. Mabel was right; the description wasn't perfect, and the entries in the journal were meticulous. Dipper couldn't imagine the author getting something like this wrong.

But if this Danny was dangerous, maybe the author hadn't studied him long enough before hiding him away.

Except…. If the author had known he was dangerous, they'd have said that. They wouldn't have put any warning in a code that couldn't be broken. Maybe the author hadn't known what Phantom really was. Maybe they hadn't even known what the thermos contained.

But if they hadn't, who had told them about the special thermos in the first place? And why wouldn't the author have just dug behind the shack like Dipper had to find out? The book was full of other instances where the author had gone searching for something to satisfy their curiosity.

Dipper didn't notice that Mabel had offered to cover the difference in Danny's admission fee until she was handing money to Wendy, and by then it was too late to protest—or prove—that Mabel's money was most likely his, just 'borrowed'. He wondered if she'd asked him when he'd been too busy to notice or just informed him when he'd been too busy to notice.

Mabel grabbed Danny's hand and pulled him towards the entrance, but she shot a look at him over her shoulder, and Dipper realized she was trying to buy him time.

He just didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know what Phantom was, what Danny was, didn't know if it really _was_ a coincidence that he looked like Phantom and shared a name and happened to be visiting Gravity Falls just then (though all of that was why Dipper didn't think it mere coincidence). And he didn't know how he could find out. If Danny had given a last name, Mabel hadn't told him, so he couldn't even run into town to see if Danny's story held water.

Wendy raised her eyebrows at him. "Are you just going to stand there or are you going to go in with them?"

Dipper hesitated, but he hadn't told Wendy everything yet, and he didn't want to start with this mystery in the journal. "I'll catch up with them in a bit."

Wendy smirked. "Giving Mabel some time alone with her new target?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," Dipper said. He'd been less enthused by Mabel's rotating—and, more to the point, highly questionable—boyfriends so far. He was pretty sure some maybe-phantom wouldn't be on her list, but there were some things he really didn't understand about his sister, and that was one of them. Hopefully Danny didn't turn out to be a vampire. That would really take the cake. Although he had never heard any lore about vampires turning into mist, so….

He had to figure this out. Mabel thought the same thing he did—that Danny and Phantom were connected somehow—or she wouldn't have called him down in the first place. She'd let him know whatever Danny said to her, so there was no point in eavesdropping, but he couldn't possibly dig up something on Danny in such a short period of time, and they'd already looked for any trace Phantom might have left behind.

The only thing Dipper could think of doing right now was to test his theory that Danny and Phantom _were_ connected, but the only way he could think of doing that—

He was going to regret this.

"If Mabel asks, I'm upstairs," he told Wendy, but Mabel wouldn't ask, because Mabel would know. Mabel had probably come to this conclusion the moment she'd seen Danny, and her distracting him by taking him on a tour had been her way of telling Dipper that all this stuff was more his territory than hers.

He'd have to try summoning Phantom—and face whatever consequences came with that.

* * *

There was something _wrong_ here, but Danny couldn't figure out what it was. He hadn't noticed it at first, but it slowly became harder and harder to listen to Mabel as she excitedly pointed out one exhibit or another. He knew at a glance that most things were fake, but some of the others—

Danny shivered, but he couldn't shake this _feeling_ he had, and now he wasn't sure if it was wrongness at all; now it felt like there was somewhere he needed to be, something he needed to find, something, something, something—

Maybe this was why he was here? If it wasn't Vlad, it had to be something. Heck, even if it _was_ Vlad, Vlad wouldn't be above trying to use him to get something, though Danny had no idea what that something might be. Or how to avoid playing right into Vlad's hands.

Maybe he should just try to go home. He didn't need to stay here. He could head into town. Buy a map—or at least look at one, since he was out of money. Or phone Jazz or Sam and Tucker to come and pick him up in the Spectre Speeder or even the Fenton Jet. How long had he been gone? It was still summer, but that didn't tell him if it had been a day or a week, and if it was a week, Jazz would be _frantic_, especially if Sam and Tucker weren't able to fill her in on whatever had happened, and whatever excuse they'd told his parents would be coming apart and—

Danny felt in his pocket, found his phone, and pulled it out. It was dead. Again. He really needed to start carrying a charger….

He looked up to see Mabel staring at him. He didn't know if she'd asked him a question or if she'd just noticed that he wasn't paying attention to her.

"Do you guys have a phone I can use?" he asked. It wasn't tactful—he would've had to have been paying closer attention to Mabel's one-sided conversation to figure out how to best slip in a question like that—but for some reason, it was hard to concentrate, and— "I was supposed to meet up with my sister." He was rambling now, lies mixing with truth. "She's going to freak if she thinks I got lost. It'll be long distance, though. Is that okay?" He couldn't offer to pay, not when he'd used the last of his change to get into this tourist trap.

Mabel blinked in surprise but nodded. "Just don't tell Grunkle Stan," she said, even though he had no idea who that was. She led him through another door half-hidden behind a stuffed jackalope, into a hallway, and through to the kitchen. She pointed to a phone mounted on the wall.

"Thanks," he said. He knew a handful of numbers by heart, and Jazz's cell phone was one of them. He'd call her first—she could deal with their parents and tell Sam and Tucker and figure out a plan to get him home—and then—

"_We're sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again."_

"I…must've misdialled," Danny said slowly, hanging up before trying again. He'd thought—

"_We're sorry; you have reached—"_

No.

He _knew_ that was Jazz's number. He _knew_ it, and he definitely hadn't gotten it wrong the second time.

He dialled it a third time anyway.

"_We're sorry—"_

Danny slammed the phone back onto its hook. He couldn't even pretend it was something wrong with the line. This phone wasn't cordless, even though he could see the cradle for a cordless phone on the opposite counter. Whatever this was, it wasn't just some power outage somewhere. Back home, he'd suspect Technus was planning something, but here….

"Her phone must be dead, too," Danny heard himself say. "I…I should go. See if I can find her. Or my parents. I didn't exactly tell anyone where I was going." Truth in his lies again. "They're going to be wondering where I am. They won't know I followed the signs for this place. They won't be looking for me here."

Mabel said something, but he wasn't listening to her. He just needed to go, to find out what had happened, to get a hold of Jazz or Sam or Tucker or anyone—

He wasn't sure he remembered to say goodbye before he went out the kitchen door and started running for the path in the woods.

He was sure to wait until the path twisted and the trees closed off behind him, hiding him from the shack and anyone who might've been watching, and then he transformed, and then—

Something grabbed him, pulled, and Danny screamed.

* * *

Mabel heard the cry from upstairs. It wasn't Dipper's, but she told Wendy it was, told her that Dipper was just surprised, and waved her off as she took the stairs two at a time. Dipper was sitting on their bedroom floor with the journal. He'd shoved the rug and a few stray clothes and balls of yarn aside and drawn a circle in the middle of the floor with chalk. A few candles burned even though sunlight still streamed in from the window.

Floating in the circle, breathing hard, was Phantom.

She didn't break eye contact with him when he met her gaze. She didn't know if she could. "Dipper?"

"It took a while." His voice was hoarse. "Longer than it should've."

Phantom stared. Looked down at the circle. Looked back at them. "Did…." He stopped. Licked his lips. Swallowed. "Did one of you make a wish?"

Neither of them answered. The journal had warned that phantoms would cause pain to those who summoned them, would trick people into _thinking_ they'd summoned them, but the details were too scarce for her liking. And what she'd seen with Danny hadn't convinced her that the book had everything right, at least in Phantom's case.

"This was magic," Phantom said. "It…it has to be magic." He pointed at the journal. "Is that a spell book or something?"

He looked around when he was met with silence, but he didn't leave the circle.

"Maybe you should just exorcise him," Mabel whispered, but Phantom heard her.

He spun around, green eyes wide with panic. "_No_! Seriously, please, don't. You can't. I don't even want to know what—" He broke off. Shook his head. "This has to be Desiree, right? Somebody made a wish. Back home, maybe. Or maybe this isn't even real. I don't know. But this…. It's powerful. And I wouldn't be dreaming something like this. It's gotta be Desiree. I have to stop her. You have to let me go."

He was trapped, then. Dipper had gotten it right. Not that she'd ever thought he might have gotten it wrong. It was Dipper. He was good at this kind of thing. Better than she'd ever be.

"_Please_." He was looking between them now, floating as close to the edge of the circle as he could, his feet only inches above the floor. "If Desiree is here, that's _not good_, and you _rea_—"

Mabel didn't think she'd blinked, but now Phantom was sitting in the middle of the circle, crossed-legged, his head in his hands.

Mabel heard Dipper's sharp inhale and knew he'd seen it, too. Whatever it was.

Phantom finally spoke without lifting his head. "If you stay on this road," he mumbled, "you'll find yourself on a path you can't turn away from." He looked up then, scowling, and added, "Apparently, I'm supposed to warn you, because _someone_ decided I make a good poster boy for interdimensional safety and the consequences of the lack thereof."


	2. Chapter 2

Danny knew magic when he felt it.

Well.

He could recognize it, anyway. Usually. Unless the magic came with a memory wipe. Between Desiree, Dora's amulet, Circus Gothica, the Reality Gauntlet, and everything else, he was getting pretty good at picking out it or its effects.

That's why he knew it was magic that held him in this stupid circle.

It was also why he wasn't wholly sure he could just burn through a part of the chalk drawing with an ectoblast without bad consequences.

And just about when he was ready to risk those consequences (because he did _not_ want to know what an attempted exorcism would do to him), he found himself with the unfortunately familiar weight of a clockwork medallion around his neck.

Clockwork floated on the edge of the circle, not far from the two kids who had released Danny and then trapped him here. Clearly, whatever bound Danny wasn't strong enough to bind him. Not that Danny really expected it would be, with Clockwork being who he was and the kids possibly targeting Danny after seeing him earlier. But if Clockwork was here now—

"You are where you need to be," Clockwork said as Danny opened his mouth.

Danny frowned. "Yeah? Why can't I call Jazz's cell? Where am I? _When_ am I?"

Danny didn't really expect Clockwork to give him a straight answer—it was Clockwork, after all—but the ghost shifted to that of a child and replied, "Welcome to 2012."

Ice filled his chest. 2012? _2012_? He'd been stuck in a thermos for _five years_? No wonder his call to Jazz hadn't gone through! She'd be in college now, maybe _through _college by now, or trying to get a masters degree, or a PhD, or—

Or she might not be.

No. He wasn't going to jump to that conclusion, wasn't going to assume this was like last time, not when this was all he had to go on, not even when Clockwork was the reason he was here. Clockwork, who wasn't supposed to interfere. Clockwork, who refused to interfere more often than not. Clockwork, who saw it all from above and had very clearly forgotten what it was like to be part of the parade, if he'd ever even known that.

"Are you _serious_?" Anger was safer than panic, and he had good reason to be angry. Clockwork had never talked to him about this, whatever this was. Not like the last time he'd sent Danny to the future. "My family probably thinks I'm _dead_!"

"Technically speaking, you are."

Danny hissed through his teeth. "No. You don't get to do this. You don't get to rip me out of my life and shove me in a thermos and stick me somewhere on the other side of the country. You can't just put me wherever you _think_ I need to be! I just lost five years of my life thanks to you!"

"You've been held in stasis for over thirty," Clockwork said mildly as his form changed again. "You'll be returned to your own time before your friends and family realize you've taken a detour."

A detour? _That's_ what he was calling this?

"This isn't a detour! Just because you can put me back where I came from, doesn't mean I haven't still lost that time. And what do you mean, _thirty years_?"

Clockwork's expression didn't change even as his face shifted, growing younger again. He didn't deign to argue with Danny, instead saying, "The tapestry of time is scarred here. Further interference is…discouraged."

Danny crossed his arms. "What the heck do you call this, then?"

"A correction."

"Why do _I_ have to be the one to fix it? It's not like the Observants don't know to watch me. If they think I'm meddling in the timestream again—" Danny broke off. "Wait, what do you mean _further interference_? What did you do here before?"

That earned him the barest shadow of exasperation crossing Clockwork's face. "The interference was not mine."

"Until now."

That _might_ be a slight thinning of the lips. It was probably as much as he was going to get from Clockwork, anyway. "Seeking to repair what others have damaged before reality becomes unstable is hardly unwarranted interference."

"So a stitch in time saves nine? Wow, I did not realize that expression could be applied literally with time travel. But that still doesn't explain why me." Clockwork said nothing, and a horrible thought occurred to Danny. "Except. Wait. You said thirty years. I…. You're trying to interfere without the Observants knowing, aren't you?" He pulled a face. "Why _thirty years_?"

"That was the point of least interference, when your placement would have the smallest effect."

"So how come I don't remember anything?" He tried not to let it show how much that bothered him, but it did. He wasn't sure what he'd been doing before this. Hanging out with Sam and Tuck? Fighting? School? Homework? Nothing seemed clearer than the rest.

He couldn't remember if he'd been in the Ghost Zone, but he definitely didn't remember seeing Clockwork.

Still, he hadn't come out of the thermos wearing one of Clockwork's medallions, so it's not like Clockwork just ambushed him, sucked him into a thermos, and dropped him here. And…it must still have been Clockwork, right? Because point of least interference was still interference, and thirty years was definitely time travel when it was thirty years in the _past_. Or twenty-five and— Whatever. This had to be Clockwork. That had to be why he was here now. Not whoever else was messing around with time.

"You've seen the dangers of an uncontained future," Clockwork said, and it took Danny a second to realize he was ignoring Danny's question instead of answering it. "Similar destruction is almost certain here. If they stay on this road, they will find themselves on a path from which they cannot turn away. You must warn them."

"How is that _my_ job?" Danny wanted to ask why Clockwork didn't just warn them himself, but of course that would be _interfering_. As if this weren't already blatant interference. "Why can't someone else do it? _Anyone_ else? I don't even know these guys."

"Perhaps not yet," said Clockwork as his form shifted again, "but you know the dangers they face. They wish to pierce the fabric between dimensions, between realities, and will release more than they realize if they succeed."

Danny scrunched up his face. Too bad he couldn't just straight up tell these guys not to mess with interdimensional portals, but Clockwork wouldn't be happy with him spelling out the future like that. Even if he did, Mabel and Dipper wouldn't believe him when he had no other details than that. They'd just think he'd spied on them. Telling them would probably make them more likely to keep doing everything they were doing. "Let me guess: containment of whatever they let out isn't gonna be simple?"

Clockwork didn't answer, but Danny supposed he didn't really need an answer. Clockwork wouldn't have said anything about it if it was easy. And Danny wouldn't have been dragged out here to interfere if these people weren't playing with fire. Or rather, interdimensional portals.

"There's, um, a path where they win, right, when they don't listen to me and do this anyway? Because that's going to happen. Nothing I say is going to make these two trust me."

"You must warn them," Clockwork repeated.

Danny didn't know if that was a _yes_, but it hadn't been a _no_, so he counted it as a win. This was Clockwork, after all. Danny knew there were lines, and he knew he'd crossed those lines, but he wasn't entirely sure where those lines were—and which ones Clockwork was happy to ignore. More than the Observants were happy with, sure, but beyond that….

"Can I go home after this?"

No immediate answer. Bad sign. Very bad. There shouldn't be any reason Clockwork wouldn't just say _yes_ if all he had to do was give these guys a warning they probably wouldn't listen to. If nothing else, Clockwork would know it would be a way to make Danny immediately play nice and do what he was told. So for him to say nothing….

That meant Danny was supposed to do something else, something Clockwork figured he'd do if left to his own devices. Something Clockwork didn't think was worth telling Danny, or maybe that he didn't think Danny would actually do if he were told about it, or—

"I do get to go home after all this, right? There's not some other detour you expect me to make first? I just need to warn them not to do whatever they're thinking about doing, and then it's over, and we're done, and I can go back to Amity Park the same day I left it?" Because that was part of the problem. He couldn't just go home from here because it wouldn't be the home he knew. And even if next to nothing had changed (unlikely; his parents were inventors, after all), he couldn't risk being caught (especially if his parents had _five years_ worth of ghost tech he'd never seen before). That would require too much explaining.

Unless they already knew everything, in which case it would take less.

Or next to no time at all, if they didn't take it well and he had to—

But he didn't want to think about that possibility. He much preferred thinking that Jazz was right, that they would accept him, even if it took a little while for them to get used to the idea or even if they asked him a bunch of rather intrusive questions. And, right now, he much preferred not knowing, just in case the little voice in the back of his mind was right and ignorance was bliss. And—

"Why…why am I really here, Clockwork?" His voice came out as a whisper, drained of anger and instead tinged with desperation. What was he missing? Surely Clockwork wasn't just being cagey because he didn't know. Or maybe…maybe he didn't want Danny to get involved in whatever the kids were doing? Or maybe he _did_, and just couldn't risk saying it without the Observants noticing what he was doing?

"Warn them about this path," Clockwork said gently, "and your own will become clearer."

Danny hated that answer. It told him nothing. It guaranteed nothing. It was too vague when things mattered this much.

But he also had a better idea of when he could push Clockwork, when begging or wheedling for favours would work, and this wasn't one of those times.

Danny sighed, settling down in the middle of the circle and holding his head in his hands.

Clockwork was _probably_ being as helpful as he could, even if there was a chance a part of him was also being lowkey as spiteful as he could after Danny's last time travelling fiasco. Danny kind of owed him for that. There had probably been some pushback from the Observants, and Clockwork must have borne the brunt of that because Danny had never faced any consequences once the timeline was back on track. And this…. It should be simple enough. There were worse ways to repay a favour.

But still.

A little warning would've been nice.

* * *

Dipper didn't know what had happened. He wasn't going to trust the phantom—if it even _was_ a phantom, since for all he knew, it was just a different sort of ghost trying to trick them into _thinking_ it was a phantom by calling itself one. At least, it wasn't living up to the whole 'phantoms cause pain to those who summon them' bit in the journal. Not that he was complaining. It would just be nice to know what he was dealing with for once.

Maybe the pain part didn't come until the phantom escaped the summoning circle?

"What…." Mabel hesitated and looked at him, but he didn't know if asking questions would make things worse. She plowed on when he didn't stop her, asking, "What are you talking about?"

"If you stay on this road," Phantom repeated, "you'll find yourself on a path you can't turn away from. That's it. That's the message. I'm apparently a messenger now. Don't shoot me."

"Who are you supposed to be a messenger for?" Dipper asked. The strain of keeping Phantom contained was worth it to get some answers. The journal…. He couldn't figure out why Phantom's section in the journal had been coded differently, and he would rather find out as much as he could.

"That's…not really important."

Assuming Phantom would be helpful. Dipper should've known better than to hope he'd be forthcoming about everything. "How is that not important?" he demanded. The author of the journals—

"You won't know who it is anyway. He's, uh, not supposed to interfere as often as he does."

_Interfere_? What was _that_ supposed to mean? Interfere with _what_?

"Try us," Mabel said, crossing her arms. "We've had an interesting summer so far."

Understatement. And maybe a bit more information than Dipper would've liked to give away, even if it was completely vague.

"Fine." Phantom looked defiant now. "His name is Clockwork. Happy now?"

No. He'd never heard of Clockwork. Dipper had no idea who he was supposed to be. Or, more accurately, what.

"Why's he sending us messages? And through you?"

Phantom rolled his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just really unlucky. And maybe because he thinks you'll listen? Clockwork's not the most helpful guy out there. I'm surprised he interfered at all. I'm surprised _I got dragged into this_." He said this last part with a sneer, looking to Dipper and Mabel's right.

Dipper didn't need to look to confirm that there was nothing there—nothing visible, anyway—but he did anyway.

The apparent absence of something did nothing to reassure him.

Phantom sighed, his annoyance draining away. "Okay, look, I'll be straight with you. I don't know why I got drafted to play messenger boy, but it's probably because I owe him a favour, and he's not supposed to be doing this kind of thing. Interfere, I mean. Which means that if he is, it's big and you should listen to me. So stop whatever you're doing. Drop it. Walk away. Your future selves would thank you for it if they had the chance. It's probably a lot of pain and suffering or it wouldn't be on Clockwork's radar."

"Pain and suffering, huh?" Mabel echoed, glancing at Dipper. He knew how she felt; he hadn't expected Phantom to warn them of the pain he was going to bring in an attempt to trick them into releasing him, but it just meant they needed to be on their guard. If they hadn't had the journal, they might have fallen for it.

Phantom nodded, not noticing or not caring how uncomfortable they were. "Clockwork wouldn't interfere for something small. He thinks other people are messing around, though—I don't think just you guys? I mean, not _you _you, you're too young, and if this started thirty years ago or something, it couldn't be you…unless you're time travellers?"

"Did you want us to be?" Mabel said slowly.

Phantom blinked. "What? No!"

"Then we aren't," she said, and Dipper glared at her and kicked at her leg. He couldn't really put any strength behind it, and she'd probably been half expecting it, since she didn't flinch. Phantom might not have noticed the movement, though. Or the glare. If he did, he didn't react to it.

"Time travel is impossible," Dipper said pointedly, switching his gaze back to Phantom.

Phantom just stared at him. "I'm a ghost, you're keeping me trapped inside a magic circle, and you draw the line at time travel?"

Dipper nodded. "It's not possible. You can't go faster than the speed of light." He wasn't a great liar—Mabel was definitely better, and she wasn't particularly good, either—but he wasn't about to tell Phantom that they knew time travel was possible. Or that they had time travelled and run into another time traveller. Phantom might tell them more if he thought they were ignorant of that.

"You're using _magic_. And talking to a ghost. What part of that do most people consider _possible_?"

"Actually—" Mabel started.

"Forget I asked," Phantom interrupted. "My point is, if you don't believe in time travel, you should, and if you don't believe in interdimensional travel, you should, because something along those lines is in your future if you don't stop all this. Which you should."

"Because you said so?" Mabel asked, and Dipper kicked her again, this time less subtly. He didn't care if Phantom noticed that one.

Phantom snorted. "Because whatever it is is bad enough that it merits forewarning. Courtesy of Clockwork. Even if he doesn't want to admit it."

"Bit of a circular argument," Dipper muttered, not quite quietly enough that they wouldn't hear him.

Phantom groaned. "Fine, ignore me. Just let me go."

"No. I'm not going to let you hurt anyone."

"Who said I was going to hurt anyone?" Phantom spluttered. "I'm not! Seriously, I'm just the messenger here."

"Yeah, that's what you'd say if you were planning on hurting someone and wanted to trick us into letting you out."

He caught Mabel's eye again and saw the trace of worry on her features. She knew he was bluffing. She knew he couldn't do this forever, that his strength would give out and the magic within the circle would fade. The symbols could only hold power for so long. With Phantom being as strong as he was—or Dipper being as weak as he was; whichever was the main reason behind why it had taken so long for the spell to work in the first place, though it might be both considering he was still fairly new to magic—Dipper wasn't sure they had much longer.

Judging by the increasingly frustrated look on Phantom's face, though, he didn't know that. Which at least meant the magic wasn't noticeably weakening yet. It would buy them a little time, but—

"If you insist you're not going to hurt anyone," Mabel said, "then you don't need to keep secrets from us. Keep talking, and then we'll let you go."

That was one way of putting it. If the spell was going to collapse on him anyway, at least they might be able to get something out of Phantom. Not that they'd know if it was truth or lies, but at least it would be a starting point. And that would be better than nothing.

Phantom threw up his hands. "I gave you guys the message already!"

"No, she's right," Dipper said. Mabel smiled at his words as if she hadn't expected him to approve. "You've hardly told us anything. What do you know about the author of the journals?"

Phantom looked confused. Dipper didn't think it was feigned, either. "What journals?" He looked at the open book and added, "So that's not a magic book? Or is it just a journal full of spells that you're not calling a magic book?"

"It's a resource, not a book on magic." Not alone, anyway. But if Phantom didn't recognize it or know anything about it, he wouldn't be able to help Dipper figure this out. And it meant if this Clockwork person had written the journals, Phantom didn't know about it. Dipper flipped the book cover up just enough to show the symbol on the front with the three emblazoned on it, but Phantom just shrugged. Either he was a really good actor or he genuinely didn't know anything.

Which was funny, considering he was in it.

Mabel clearly had the same suspicions, since she said, "You have to know something. The author of the journals is the reason we found you."

Phantom frowned and flicked his eyes to the still-empty spot beside them. Dipper couldn't quite suppress a shiver. After a few long seconds, Phantom admitted, "I don't remember how I got here. I'm not lying, okay? I really don't know. And it's bugging me. That's why I wanted to know if you knew Vlad. This is the kind of thing he'd do to me. And then Clockwork…." He trailed off. "He won't tell me my own future or anything else about yours. But if you're trying to find out more about whoever wrote that journal, and if they wrote me into it, well, that's probably what Clockwork's warning was about."

"The author hasn't been wrong about anything that's turned up before," Dipper said.

Phantom crossed his arms. "Well, from the way you two are looking at me, he's wrong about me. It's not like I'm going to snap and kill everyone. Seriously, let me go, I'll be gone, and everything will be back to normal."

He'd been forced to summon the phantom, and now it was trying to trying to trick him into releasing it.

Of course, if they didn't do something soon, it would get free anyway.

"How did you…." Mabel broke off, bit her lip, and looked at Dipper. Then, turning back to Phantom, "Danny. The boy who was in here earlier. What about him?"

Phantom swallowed. "His name is Danny Fenton."

Dipper didn't say anything, and Mabel knew to hold her tongue, too. Phantom squirmed, one hand reaching up the rub the back of his neck. They waited, but he didn't volunteer any other information.

Dipper sucked in a breath, deep and long, and let it out slowly. He didn't know how much longer he could do this. He clenched his hands into fists, afraid that if he didn't, it would be too easy for Phantom to see him shaking. "And?" It came out as a growl, and Phantom flinched.

"And he's a friend."

That was a lie. It had to be. Dipper looked at Mabel and saw that she didn't believe Phantom either. But Phantom had straightened up, and though Dipper couldn't see it, he could _feel_ Phantom reaching one hand behind him to prod the boundaries of the circle. It didn't hurt, exactly, but trying to hold the spell together was becoming more and more like trying to hold water cupped in his fingers. It was draining fast now, and—

"Look, just stop this business with the journals and finding whoever wrote them," Phantom said. "What's coming if you keep going the way you're going isn't good. It'll be like…like you've opened Pandora's box. The one from the myth, not her actual box, although that, too, if it's on the wrong setting…." He trailed off. "Please?"

"We can't," Dipper said, hoping it would get Phantom to argue with him. But his voice was shaky now, and he couldn't—

The spell dissipated, and Phantom smiled before vanishing.

* * *

"Is he gone?" Mabel asked quietly.

"I don't know," Dipper admitted. He leaned back against his bed and closed his eyes. "Probably not, if the journal is right about phantoms."

"What if that's not what he is?" Pain and suffering might be in their future, but it hadn't started immediately. What would Phantom gain from waiting? He already knew they expected it, and he had to know Dipper was weaker now than he would be in the future. Sure, he didn't know she wouldn't be able to exorcise him, or at least that she'd never tried doing that to a ghost before, but it shouldn't stop him from jumping on an opportunity to strike while they were down.

"I don't know."

Mabel tried to swallow down her fear at Dipper's repetition. The cryptic message about Phantom had been coded differently than anything else in the journal, and it hadn't even been near the pages on ghosts and exorcisms. Maybe he really wasn't a phantom like he pretended. Maybe the author hadn't even known what he was. Maybe that's why the author had never specified what was in the thermos that Dipper had found.

_There's something stuck in some special thermos buried behind the shack_….

She wished Dipper had had a chance to examine the thermos before Phantom had taken it.

"What about his warning?"

That prompted Dipper to open his eyes. "We can't stop. He's not really here just to warn us. We wouldn't have found him where we did, the way we did, if he's telling the truth about everything."

Mabel said what Dipper didn't: "And that doesn't explain Danny."

"No. It doesn't."

Dipper must have no idea what did, no _real_ idea that he didn't think was too much of a stretch, or he'd have said it.

"So we don't listen to him?"

"He hasn't really given us any reason to trust him."

"Yeah," Mabel said quietly, "that's what I thought." But she couldn't get Phantom's abrupt change out of her head, the way he'd been pleading with them to let him out before breaking off mid word and moving faster than she'd been able to see. He'd…changed. In a split second. Still asking them to let him go but with less desperation than before.

He'd claimed that he didn't know more than what he'd told them, but she didn't believe that any more than she believed that Danny Fenton, whoever he was, was just some _friend_. As if they couldn't see the similarities. As if they had never been tricked before by someone pretending to be someone—something—they're not.

Even if Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom weren't the same person—ghost, creature, whatever—they had to be connected. Why would Danny Fenton have come here? To scout out the territory? To try to find Phantom, if Phantom hadn't sent him? But then there had been the phone call to his sister, before he ran out….

"He talked about other dimensions," Mabel said slowly. "Do you think he's from a different dimension?"

Dipper didn't answer, instead pulling the journal towards him and flipping through it.

"Do you think it was the author of the journals who wrote that note about him? Or do you think it was someone else?"

More silence. Mabel didn't like that. She much preferred Dipper to talk her ear off with explanations or theories, at least when she had none of her own. She'd rather ignore his ramblings than not have them when they needed them.

"Is this a trap?"

"I hope not," Dipper finally said, settling on a page in the journal and showing it to her, "but we better be ready for when he comes back in case it is."


	3. Chapter 3

"Okay," Danny said to himself once he was back in the forest and sitting on a springy bed of moss. He ran a hand through his hair. "They know. Or at least they practically know, because there's no way they bought that." That was a problem. Not them finding out the truth, exactly, unless it meant they played that card and trapped him again. (He'd _really_ have to figure out how to prevent that from happening again. His parents didn't believe in non-ghostly magic, but Vlad would have a field day if he realized that had actually worked.)

Thing was, though, if what he'd done had really been enough, if he'd somehow managed to do whatever Clockwork had wanted, Danny would be on his way home right now.

But he wasn't, which meant he hadn't.

And he couldn't exactly time travel without help, so it's not like he had an alternate route home.

That _probably_ meant that they hadn't believed his warning, either. He'd have to figure out how to convince them, assuming he could talk to them without them trying to exorcise him or something. Unless exorcism would send him to the Ghost Zone? He'd be a lot more willing to let that happen if he knew that for sure; it beat waiting around for a natural portal or risk getting caught by Vlad if he tried to sneak into one of the ones he'd built over the years.

Unfortunately, given some of the things Danny had seen in the past, he wasn't going to bet that _exorcism_ wouldn't equate to _destruction_.

Especially in a place that gave off such skin-crawling vibes—seriously, what was _wrong_ with that place?

Well.

Real magic, apparently. Somewhere. Buried within all the scams.

Buried.

Like his thermos had been buried.

What else was buried, then?

Danny slumped back against a tree, absently flicked an ant off his knee, and stared upward at the branches. "I have to go back, don't I?"

No one answered, which was probably a good thing. It was too much to hope that Clockwork would come back so soon. Especially when he was set on 'not interfering' while interfering as much as possible through Danny.

Mabel and Dipper's magic, whatever sort it was, worked better on him when he was Phantom. His best defense was staying as Fenton. Even if he couldn't resist whatever they tried next forever, it would buy him time, and that might be all he needed.

It would be nice to think that they wouldn't be plotting something at this exact moment, but he knew better than to engage in such wishful thinking—at least out loud—when magic was involved.

"I'll just stay invisible until I can figure this out," he muttered.

The forest seemed to swallow his words.

This whole place was weird.

The sooner he could get out of here, the better.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?"

Dipper didn't bother to look up from his reading. "The journal hasn't been wrong before. I've just been wrong when interpreting it. If he's a ghost, those runes should keep him from harming us." He made a vague gesture at the walls of their room, which he and Mabel had carefully covered in chalk runes. Not as permanent as he'd like, but a lot easier to get rid of in a pinch if someone came poking around.

Or, more to the point, if something turned out to be the wrong rune or drawn incorrectly and having a meaning that was _extremely_ counterproductive.

"Should." Mabel's voice was flat. "Can't you be more confident than that?"

"I'm starting to wonder if he's really a phantom, whatever he says," Dipper explained as he sat up. "He doesn't have their distinctive piercings, and he didn't try to hurt me, even though I summoned him. Which means he's either a category ten ghost or he's not really a ghost at all."

"But you summoned him," she said, "and he was trapped in the circle."

"That might just be what he wants us to think."

"So what, then? Oracle? Because of the prophecy?"

Dipper grimaced. "Only if we're lucky." He turned the journal around to show her what he was looking at.

"Some kind of demon? You think Danny's possessed by him?"

"He did say something about interdimensional travel," Dipper said defensively. "You don't need to say that like it's impossible. And that would merit the author's warning."

"So would a category ten ghost, and a ghost could possess someone as easily as a demon."

"I guess."

He'd tried not to grumble it, but Mabel slid down beside him and leaned against his bed as well. "It's okay not to know something, bro-bro."

"I know," he said, flipping through the journal again to see if he could find something else that might be relevant, "but if I mess this up, things could get bad fast."

"Maybe we should tell the others, then. At least Grunkle Stan."

"But then we'd have to tell him everything, and…." And he didn't want to tell them about the journal yet, not even Grunkle Stan. He just…didn't. It would feel too much like admitting defeat. What if he wasn't even allowed to keep the journal?

Mabel hummed in agreement, stayed silent for about three seconds, and then asked, "What if he's right?"

"Grunkle Stan? About what?"

"No, Phantom. The warning. What if he's right? What if he is an oracle, or a messenger for an oracle, or something like that?"

Dipper scowled. "Anyone with actual foresight would know that saying something the way he did is just going to make people more determined, not less."

"Maybe that's the whole point."

Dipper glanced at her. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe the point isn't to warn us off."

"Really? That's what it sounded like to me. He kept telling us to stop."

"But that's not the actual message he gave us. _If you stay on this road, you'll find yourself on a path you can't turn away from._ That just means if we keep going, we won't be able to stop later. It doesn't necessarily mean we _have_ to stop now. Stopping now was just what he thought we should do."

She had a point. If he really was just a messenger, he wouldn't necessarily know the true meaning of the message. And if he was wrong? About them needing to stop? Then that had to mean— "It's forewarning. So we'll be better prepared for whatever's coming. Whatever _has_ to come."

Assuming Mabel wasn't wrong about that, that changed things.

Phantom might not be an enemy. Danny might not be a conduit or something like that. And the journal's warning….

But maybe it hadn't been a warning. It had been in a different hand than the rest of the journal. A special thermos to contain the messenger until it was time for the message to be heard….

"I hope you're right," Dipper said.

"But in case I'm not, we still have to do all of this." She nodded at the chalked runes. "These will stop ghosts and demons?"

"It's every protection rune I've found in here," Dipper said, lifting the journal a few inches for emphasis. "I'm hoping none of them cancel each other out."

Mabel snorted. "I'm surprised you didn't do that weeks ago."

"I've been practicing drawing them," Dipper admitted. "In the dirt. With a stick. I didn't want to risk getting something wrong when it mattered. I'm not as good at freehanding as you are without practice."

"That's just because you spend more time reading than drawing and crafting." Mabel climbed to her feet. "You can keep looking through the journal. I'm going downstairs to wait for Danny."

"You think that's how he'll come back? After that story he fed you about his family before running out?"

Mabel smirked. "I'm pretty sure he's figured out we don't trust Phantom. Trying to convince us to trust Danny is his best bet."

"But we're not going to trust him." Not liking the look on Mabel's face, Dipper added a pointed, "Right?"

"I like to hear people out."

"Mabel!"

"What? He _was_ kinda cute."

Dipper groaned. "For all we know, he's as real a person as Norman was."

She just shrugged. "Summer romances are all about risk-taking and mysteries. It's part of the thrill."

"But this is serious!"

"And I'll help you with all the serious stuff once you figure out what preparations we need to actually make. Just like I helped you draw all this. Doesn't mean I can't have fun in the meantime."

She wasn't going to listen to him, was she? "Just be careful, okay?"

"I'll be as careful as I ever am," she promised before slipping out of the room, and he bit back the urge to yell at her that that wasn't careful at all. Her definition of careful had nearly ended with her as queen of the gnomes.

But she had helped him with this, and she'd help him in the future, and she really did hate all the research, and that was his favourite part.

He just wished she'd give up the idea of having a wonderful summer romance with any boy who came near the Mystery Shack. It would make his life a lot easier. But that's what siblings did. They made things harder.

And, usually, they made things worth the effort.

With any luck, that would hold true this time.

* * *

Danny had absolutely no idea what the siblings—twins?—had up their sleeves, nor how fast they could pull something together, but judging by the magic circle, it would be faster than he'd like.

He knew blood blossoms weren't the only things that fell under traditional methods of ghost hunting. His parents relied on technology, using their inventions before anything else, and Vlad (and therefore Valerie) was little different. Even Technus and Skulker used it. Danny was getting pretty good at dodging anything Tucker couldn't just hack, but magic? He barely dealt with that outside of Desiree. He knew next to nothing.

That didn't make him feel any better about going back to the Mystery Shack.

It didn't keep him from going, either.

The place wasn't closed, but it was empty—or, at least, it was as empty as it had been earlier. He would've been better off if there had been a crowd. No crowd meant no hope of distraction. He could try being his own distraction, of course—knock a few things around with well-placed ectoblasts, since attempts to duplicate himself would probably end badly with how he felt right now—but the truth was, he didn't know if that would help.

If the adults bought into the whole magic thing as much as the kids, doing something like that would draw more attention to himself, not less. It was more likely to be recognized for what it was: something unnatural. And for all that this place was clearly set up like some sort of scam, it…. It wasn't all a scam. He'd felt that much before. He was _sure_ it hadn't just been the beginnings of that magic circle.

He could still feel it now, hovering where he was underneath a window. Something that made his skin crawl. Something that had his arms covered in goosebumps. Something…something that felt achingly familiar but made him want to run away at the same time.

Or maybe that was just whatever the others had already done.

Or what he was supposed to be warning them away from.

It would've been nice if Clockwork could've given him some straight answers for once.

Danny put one hand on the sun-warmed side of the shack. Nothing happened, so he tried to phase through the wall. _Tried_ being the operative word, as it didn't work. He scowled and pushed harder, to no avail. He even tried the windowpane in case glass reacted differently than wood. It didn't.

It figured.

These guys _would_ find a way to make the entire place phase-proof without coating it in anti-ecto goo.

"Why can't just _one_ thing be easy for me, huh?" Danny muttered. Clockwork didn't answer, of course; he was probably back in his tower watching through a portal, sure that everything was going the way he thought it should.

Fine. Whatever. He'd do what he could, even if that meant taking more risks than he'd like in a place like this. Anything to get back home.

Still, what he was doing wasn't the smartest. Even by Tucker's terms, it would be a fairly bad idea. Danny knew that even as he circled the shack, looking for an open window that didn't exist. Everything was closed. Most likely, if anything _had_ been open, the others had closed it. Since phasing wasn't an option, he'd have to go through a door. Maybe the back door was still open? If Mabel hadn't locked it behind him….

Danny peeked through the screen on the back door. He couldn't see anyone, but there wasn't a full view. He turned the handle slowly, easing the (thankfully unlocked) door open and slipping inside, closing it just as silently. He half-expected to come face-to-face with someone, but the kitchen was empty.

Small mercies.

Danny hesitated, trying to figure out where he should start his search when he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for. Did these people hide stuff in plain sight, or was he better off digging through closets and the basement and the attic? Except the room he'd been in with the other kids _had_ pretty much been the attic, or at least some kind of attic room or loft—is that what a loft was?—and he wasn't sure if this place had a basement, but…

Danny slowly stepped onto the floor, holding his breath as he let it take his full weight. Flying in human form got exhausting after a while. He tried to go intangible and keep going, hoping to slip right through the floor, just in case he wasn't prevented from that now that he was inside, but his shoes stayed firmly on the wood beneath them.

Fine.

Old fashioned way it was, then.

It's not like he really expected anything else.

Besides, this place _was_ the Mystery Shack. It had to have secrets. And, well, clearly these people were prepared for the supernatural. Announcing his presence wouldn't necessarily win him any favours, but maybe he could be his own distraction if he did it in a more old-fashioned way instead of trying to fool them like he had earlier.

Knocking on walls should still help him find hollow spots—_hiding spots_, for whatever information had to be hidden around here to merit Clockwork's interference—and they shouldn't expect anything less from a ghost. Judging from the junk for sale in the gift shop, the head guy would probably use the excuse of calling this place haunted to up his prices anyway. Danny might be doing them a favour.

It wasn't very subtle, and it meant completely abandoning any hope of coming out of this unnoticed, but it was also very unlikely that he wasn't expected. He knew that. It was too much to hope for that they weren't expecting him, especially considering he couldn't phase through any of the walls. That wasn't a coincidence.

He just hoped he was right about them not being able to do as much to him as long as he didn't go ghost, even though he was using his ghost powers.

* * *

Wendy didn't pay attention to the floor creaking at first.

She didn't pay attention to the odd knocking sound, either.

At least, not until she realized it was moving and coming far too regularly, too _rhythmically_, to be something Soos was tinkering with while they didn't have any customers.

But that's what made the floorboards creaking wrong, too. No customers. She knew the squeaky floorboards in this place. They all did. They all also avoided them now, more from habit formed by annoyance than anything else. But the last customer to come in had been that kid, and according to Mabel, he was long gone.

Wendy popped the bubble she'd been blowing but didn't look up from her magazine. Instead, she listened while pretending to read, scanning the page to keep up appearances but not taking in any of the words.

The floorboards shouldn't be creaking, and there shouldn't be any weird knocking. _Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap._ It definitely wasn't a woodpecker, even if that might be a seemingly logical conclusion from some city slicker who knew nothing about Gravity Falls. Someone—something—was inside the Mystery Shack. And if it was supposed to be tapping out Morse code, well, it wasn't being rapped out by someone who had a concept of long and short; the pauses were too inconsistent, even if the reoccurrence was not.

Wendy flicked her eyes to Mabel, who'd come downstairs to borrow one of Wendy's old magazines and was sitting up on a stool in the corner. She was still humming to herself. Either she hadn't noticed or she was doing exactly what Wendy was and pretending.

Wendy sighed. Sometimes, she was really not paid enough. Still, this was a good job on the whole. Plenty of time to read and just enough of the inexplicable to keep things interesting. About par for the Mystery Shack, really.

"Hey, Mabel, what's your brother up to?"

"Reading," she answered without looking up. "Boring stuff." She folded open the magazine and turned it around, showing off a bright advertisement for perfumes. "Do you mind if I cut this up for my scrapbook? I like the flowers."

"Go wild," Wendy said. Mabel chirped her thanks, but Wendy was still listening to the tapping and the occasional floorboard creak. Whatever it was was coming closer.

She checked her watch; almost closing, but Stan was probably still in town, looking after…something. Wendy didn't ask anymore. Stan had had that look in his eye recently, been in a sort of mood where he answered questions with a joke, and she hadn't bothered trying to get anything out of him. He'd fill her in if she needed to know. She knew Soos had gone into the hardware store earlier, too—something about wiring disappearing again—but she was pretty sure she'd seen him in the yard not that long ago. He had to be back, anyway. Stan wouldn't have left without having him fill in as Mr. Mystery should any tourists swing by.

Not that she needed either of them to deal with this for her, but it's not like this was an infestation of raccoons. She wouldn't mind a bit of backup if she found herself dealing with something from the side of Gravity Falls that most people ignored. Or tried to ignore, anyway. Sometimes, it really wanted to be known.

This…might be one of those times. Which might mean she wouldn't have a choice about giving Dipper and Mabel a crash course in whatever they wound up facing. The truth of it, not whatever stories she knew Dipper tried chasing; however much he seemed to be trying to keep that from her, it's not like she never heard him whispering to Soos or Mabel. Trouble was, Soos and Mabel being who they were, she wasn't sure how much of those whispers were truth….

She could remember being as ignorant of all of this as they had been at the start of the summer, as they might still be aside from an encounter or two, but that was before she started working at the Mystery Shack and realized her dad's ulterior motive for all those survival lessons.

She was pretty sure her dad didn't believe in any of the stories people told. As far as she could tell, most people didn't. Urban legends were just urban legends, and a good campfire story was just a good campfire story. If anyone had a particularly good one, well, then it might be deemed something on par with what Old Man McGucket might tell. It was weird, though. People would tell those stories, and then they'd never mention them again, even when offered the perfect circumstances for call-backs. It was like they'd just put it out of their mind completely.

Still, no longer mentioning something and not admitting to even entertaining the idea that there was a modicum of truth in any of those stories didn't mean people didn't prepare, even if it was mostly unconsciously.

And even though Stan laughed it off, even though _she_ usually laughed it off, it hadn't taken the haunting at the convenience store to open her eyes to the fact that there was more going on in Gravity Falls than anyone admitted.

Whatever. Mabel and Dipper were going to find out sooner or later that Gravity Falls wasn't the sleepy little town it appeared to be—assuming their run-in with the ghosts at the old convenience store hadn't already done that. Honestly, even she'd thought ghosts were just stories before that one; she'd figured all the _real_ stuff was the sort that was much less popular. Who would've thought it was all real?

The door separating the gift shop from the main Mystery Shack showroom creaked open.

Mabel, having torn the page from the magazine, was back to humming to herself and didn't look up from her reading.

Wendy reached below the counter, trying to figure out what in their eclectic emergency supply would actually be useful in this situation, and settled on the baking soda box that was supposed to be placed in various nooks and crannies to keep the place from smelling too musty when it rained.

There was no tapping, but she heard a floorboard creak. The one by the vending machine, if she had to guess.

"Screw it," she muttered. She tore the cardboard on the top of the baking soda box and flung the contents in the general direction of the vending machine. For the briefest moment, she saw a humanoid outline in the dust, and then it was gone.

"Wendy?"

Mabel's voice wasn't scared, exactly. Nor did it sound like she thought Wendy was crazy. But it was still too _cautious_ for Wendy's liking.

"What are you doing?"

"Summer dusting," Wendy deadpanned. "It's like spring cleaning. This helps you spot all the places you _need_ to dust." Mabel's face told her she clearly didn't buy that, but Wendy didn't care. She just smirked and added, "Go grab your brother and run outside and help Soos gather some wood. We should roast marshmallows tonight."

Mabel stared at her for a beat longer before she squealed, "I love roasting marshmallows! It's fun to catch them on fire and watch Dipper's face. He _hates_ that. He wants his to be this perfect golden brown, but it's not done till it's crispy." Grinning, she slipped off the stool and out of the room.

Wendy turned her gaze back in the direction of the vending machine. "What the hell are you?" she hissed. "And what are you doing here?"

Something _shifted_, and she could see the faint impression of footprints in the thin dusting of baking soda.

And then she blinked and saw the kid from earlier standing there.

"This isn't what it looks like," he said. "I _swear_."

Right. Like she was going to buy that.

"I mean it," he insisted, probably reading her expression. "I… There's something _wrong_ with this place, okay? I need to figure out what it is. I…. It's the only way I'm going to get home."

There was a thump from upstairs. She had to deal with this fast. "What are you?" she repeated.

"Stuck," the kid said. "And not a threat to you. Honest. Unless you're, like, secretly planning to eat the kids who live here or something."

Well, it's not like she expected straight answers from something that no doubt loved to trick humans.

"Get out."

"But—"

"Out!" she jabbed her hand towards the front door. "Now. I'll know if you try to come back."

"Not necessarily," the kid muttered, not quite quietly enough that she couldn't hear him, whatever he might think.

He vanished again.

No more footprints appeared in the white dusting the floor, but she heard that tapping again.

And then she heard the sound change.

It wasn't the rap of knuckles against solid wood. There was something hollow, something _hidden_, something—

Footsteps coming down the stairs.

Mabel and Dipper.

She lunged for a rag beneath the counter and wiped it across the countertop, pretending to be cleaning. When they waved as they ran out the door, she offered a weak smile.

No more knocking.

No more footprints.

Man, sometimes she _really_ wasn't paid enough for this.

* * *

Okay, that had not gone as well as Danny had hoped.

Fine, he'd been stupid. Revealing himself had been stupid. He shouldn't have expected help. Clearly, these people were not here to help him. That would have been too easy.

But at least whatever they'd done to the shack itself to make it phase-proof didn't extend to its contents. He hadn't been too hopeful when he'd tried to stick his arm into the vending machine, but once it had worked, well, of _course_ he'd gone right in and tried to keep going. The fact that there really was a hidden passageway behind it was an unexpected bonus. He'd been half expecting a hidden door that would have been just as effective at barring his way as every other wall in this place.

Danny dropped his invisibility and intangibility once on the other side, but he kept floating as he held up a hand and let a ghost ray illuminate the passage. There was a faint light coming from below him, but it wasn't enough to light his way by itself. Rickety stairs led downwards, the angle steeper than any stairs he'd come across before. This place really did have secrets. Maybe the Mystery Shack wasn't a total scam after all.

The stairs didn't seem terribly dusty. Despite creaking under his weight, they held when he stood on them, so he crept downwards.

When he reached the floor, it was just the landing for an elevator. A lone light bulb shone overhead. He pressed the elevator button and waited for it to come up, shifting from foot to foot. Just how deep were the secrets of this place buried that they needed an _elevator_?

Three floors down, apparently, which might explain why it was so dark when the elevator doors opened.

Danny could hear the low hum of machinery even before he stepped out of the elevator, which made it immediately evident why Clockwork had put him up to this.

This place didn't only have a creepy hidden room, it had a creepy basement lab. Because, naturally, basements were where creepy secret labs were kept.

He kept walking, calling up a ghost ray again to light up what the various computer screens and blinking lights couldn't.

Despite having more construction tools and computer screens than beakers or Erlenmeyer flasks, this lab came complete with what looked suspiciously like a nearly finished ghost portal. This one was at least ten feet above the floor, set in some kind of reverse triangle mounting, but it was definitely a portal. Which meant these guys had magic _and_ technology on their side. _Perfect_. This couldn't get any worse. This couldn't—

Danny frowned and walked forward, letting the ghost ray burn a little brighter to give him some more light. That book by the control panel looked like what the kid had had. Danny still didn't recognize the handwriting—not another novel by Freakshow, thankfully—but those were definitely blueprints to a portal. Incomplete blueprints, but still blueprints. And the portal in front of him was a heck of a lot more complete than the drawings on the page, which was not a good sign in his book.

"Maybe this is what's going to go wrong," Danny whispered. "Maybe Clockwork wants me to prevent another accident." Though, considering no one had stopped what had happened with him or Vlad, that struck him as unlikely. But an unstable portal could lead to a giant explosion, and—

The room flooded with light from overhead, and Danny jumped even as the buzzing of electricity filled his ears.

"I'm not going to let you destroy everything I've spent the last thirty years building," a voice behind him growled, and he turned just in time to see the net flying towards him.


End file.
